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grayson highlands

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    • grayson highlands

      After the Gathering, I joined Bill Cooke (cookerhiker) to hike a few days in the grayson highlands. We camped at Hickory Creek campground. Monday we hiked up Wilson Creek. The next day we drove to Massie Gap and hiked up to Thomas Knob shelter and back.
      Got to see some ponies
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      its all good
    • the day started out sunny when we got to Massie Gap. We took the Rhododendron trail to the AT, but as we climbed higher, it got cloudy and foggy. we got to see the ponies around 12:30 where a couple of young hikers were feeding them apples. We hung out with the ponies for a while and then continued up to Thomas Knob shelter, where we had lunch. Bill suggested we take the Virginias Highlands Horse trail back for a change of scenery, so after lunch we headed down the horse trail navigating through piles of horse poop.
      We came to an intersection, Bill checked his map, and we continued down toward Massie Gap.
      its all good
    • after a whlie the trail had changed from a fairly narrow rut to a woods road,with a bed of fist sized rocks, waterlogged in some places and the footing was a bit dicey. I told Bill that there seemed to be a lot less poop on this trail as we continued on. we came to a small stream crossing ,and, in trying to keep his feet dry, slipped and turned his ankle. He said it wasn't bad, and we kept hiking. But the trail felt wrong, I didn't think we were going in the right direction. A few minutes later, the sun peeked out briefly, but it was in the wrong place, and I realized we were hiking in the wrong direction. I asked Bill to see his map, and saw we had missed a dogleg turn and were on the wrong trail, the Cabin Ridge Trail.So we turned around and went right back the way we had come, back across the stream and down to the trail junction we had missed, found the VH Horse Trail and took it back to the AT.We finally got back to Massie Gap around 5:30 and back to camp a few minutes later.
      made the day interesting.
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      its all good